


Nights in Technicolour

by cosmicbluebells



Series: The Familiarity of Exit Wounds [2]
Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Loneliness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 22:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30113043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicbluebells/pseuds/cosmicbluebells
Summary: Even in the contorted position he’s in, Kojiro is a comforting presence. His warmth permeates every corner of the room like a space heater, and Kaoru takes a second to look at him, in all his mussed-hair, pyjama-clad glory.Kojiro rolls over, opens his mouth, and snores.The thudding of Kaoru’s heartbeat is painfully loud in the quiet bedroom, even with the soothing music in the background, and he thinks desperately,please. Please just let me have this.All Kaoru's knowledge of love and late nights (and life, for that matter) comes from Nanjo Kojiro.
Relationships: Nanjo Kojiro | Joe/Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom
Series: The Familiarity of Exit Wounds [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2214420
Comments: 20
Kudos: 233
Collections: Sk8 fics!!!





	Nights in Technicolour

**Author's Note:**

> tiny snippet of roommates!matchablossom i wrote in like two hours orz - can absolutely be read as stand-alone!
> 
> potential tw for descriptions of anxiety, but nothing graphic. also adam is mentioned like,,, twice.
> 
> (not beta-ed or edited.)

Kojiro is the worst of bedhead offenders, nowhere near attractive in sleep. His head is mushed between two pillows and he keeps making snorting sounds every few minutes, like he hasn’t got the hang of breathing yet.

His head is pressed up against the headboard, flattening his curls until they’re matted and spread out, straggly. He looks so stupid that Kaoru rolls his eyes, and the bubbling urge to laugh (or kick Kojiro off the bed) helps soothe some of the nerves twisting his stomach into knots.

Even in the contorted position he’s in, Kojiro is a comforting presence. His warmth permeates every corner of the room like a space heater, and Kaoru takes a second to look at him, in all his mussed-hair, pyjama-clad glory. 

Kojiro rolls over, opens his mouth, and snores.

The thudding of Kaoru’s heartbeat is painfully loud in the quiet bedroom, even with the soothing music in the background, and he thinks, _please. Please just let me have this._

Kaoru studies the ledge of the bedroom windowsill and listens to Kojiro breathe, his pulse slowing with every second.

The pizza-patterned bedsheets rustle as he slides out of bed and slips on his glasses. The bed frame creaks. Kojiro doesn’t move.

Kaoru has been waking up in the night less frequently as of late, but the dreams hover at the fringes every time he closes his eyes, and they’re still bad enough that he wakes up drenched in panic once in a while.

He walks past the closet, which houses Kojiro’s collection of countless tropical shirts. His slippers scuff against the floor as he passes the wardrobe, then the charging port in the wall. 

He rubs his eyes to get rid of the sleep. Carla lights up at the movement; the music pauses, but he whispers, “Resume playing.” The purple ring of light shuts off.

There’s something peaceful about Okinawa at night, something intangibly mellow about the way the whole city breathes a shuddering sigh of relief when the clock ticks past midnight and the trains slow down and the business-people sit down for dinner.

Okinawa never quite goes to sleep, of course. There’s work to be done, karaoke parties to attend; tourist attractions with late-night deals, so every quiet moment is accompanied by the balmy orchestral soundtrack of ocean waves and squealing brakes and thundering bass.

But it’s muted enough that Kaoru can hear himself think, enough that he doesn’t feel like the sounds of the cityscape are fighting for space alongside thoughts already present in his head, and that’s all that really matters.

Kaoru flicks on a single kitchen lamp, bathing the counter in a harsh cone of white light, and grabs the kettle. He turns on the tap and watches the water level rise. He places it on the stove.

Ever since he was a teenager, he’d drink green tea after a particularly bad nightmare. There’s nothing special about the tea in general, but it was often the only thing in the pantry and besides, going through the motions of boiling the water and stirring in cream retain a sort of unique coziness.

He doesn’t care that it has caffeine, either—he can’t exactly go back to sleep after a bad dream regardless of whether he drinks the tea or not. So he usually just opts to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, listening to Kojiro’s breath even out. So he drinks it anyway.

It’s something he does by himself, never with anyone else. Not even Kojiro, who—try as he may—doesn’t wake up until the sun is high in the bloodshot sky and Kaoru has long since left for work.

Kaoru and Adam had been similar, once upon a time, both sneaking out of their houses at four in the morning to go to the skate park. They’d even visited a cafe at one point, before sunrise. It was the closest Kaoru has ever come to sharing those midnight cups of green tea with someone else, and they left him behind not long after anyway.

Maybe Adam has instilled a kind of superstition in him, but he isn’t sure if he even _wants_ Kojiro to join him for tea, because maybe then he’d leave too.

Kaoru shakes his head. His chest feels tight; the kettle is boiling and his pulse is speeding up and he leans against the wall, slides down until he’s sitting on the tiled floor. 

He tucks his knees up to his chest, rests his forehead on his legs, and breathes in, deep. His eyes are sore from the lack of sleep, but they sting when he tries to close them, so he stares at the ramen packets and teabags lining the half-open pantry door until he gets dizzy.

Kaoru thinks about Kojiro, sometimes. The fragility of their relationship, delicate and impalpable, like a paper crane waiting to be crushed, built on late nights and sunsets and train rides going everywhere and nowhere.

He’s practically waiting for it to fall apart.

He remembers the headstrong surety he had felt when he told Adam they would always have each other’s backs; he remembers the coldness of Adam’s ruby irises, boring into his back as he walked away.

Kojiro’s eyes are different, yes—warmer, somehow, more inviting than the frightening emptiness Adam’s always held. 

But Kaoru looks at Kojiro, dreams about him, thinks of how damn easy it would be for him to become like their estranged friend. Uncaring and harsh and intense.

His gut squeezes. The kettle whistles and he stands up to turn off the flame automatically, ripping open a teabag. He drops it in the cup and the water streams in, bubbling and steaming.

The matcha leaves spill into the water, staining it a shade of powdery green. Kaoru stares into the mug, unseeing. His hair falls over his shoulder. He flicks it away.

Kojiro’s snores burrow through the drywall and Kaoru feels his shoulders relax. He opens the fridge, pours some milk into the cup of tea, and stirs it with a spoon. The metal clinks against the sides of the ceramic mug.

It’s one of the DIY-decorated cups they made for Kaoru’s twentieth birthday at a pottery place in Korea; he helped Kojiro through most of it, teaching him how to hold the paintbrush, how to make even strokes with the glaze, and Kojiro had finally ended up with a mug in clumsy pink hues and a cherry blossom drawn on the side.

Kaoru traces the cherry blossom with a thumb. The steam emanating from the tea fogs up his glasses, so he sets down the mug to let it steep and wipes the lenses with the corner of his kimono.

While the tea steeps, he busies himself with reorganizing some of the clutter on the counter—throwing away spare shopping receipts and used sticky notes, the ones Kojiro likes to put on the fridge instead of texting Kaoru in the morning.

Kaoru always goes to work first, so he sees Kojiro’s messages in the evenings, when he’s tired and beaten-down from the day—‘don’t fail tomorrow,’ or ‘I hope you had a great day,’ or sometimes merely: ‘please eat food.’

Kojiro has never been one to mince words.

He unlocks the sliding door carefully and moves it to the left. It hasn’t been used in a while—the hinges groan with hunger and the glass is coated with corroding condensation, sparse raindrops dripping in the humid crosshairs. 

The balcony floor is cold through the thin fabric of his slippers, but he just wraps the sleeves of his kimono tighter and closes the door behind him.

A dog barks on the floor below him and someone shushes it. Kaoru curls his fingers around the mug handle. There’s a collection of little figurines placed in a row next to the balcony rail, skateboard memorabilia and touristy souvenirs from their trips around the world.

The moon is a silver coin in the sky, flat and round, almost as bright as Kojiro’s smile. A palm tree waves lazily in the breeze. Its leaves are illuminated by the pearly moonlight.

The sea wind whips around his legs. He wonders if Kojiro has noticed that he’s gone, but immediately dismisses the thought. Kojiro sleeps like a log, and he’s never brought up Kaoru’s nightly escapades before, so there’s no way he would know.

Kojiro used to make fun of him for how worried he got, how he swung wildly between passive apprehension and unyielding recklessness, how he’d doubt their plan one second and be the one in charge of it the next. 

They dismissed it as the product of the same adolescent abandon and desperation that plagued all three of them, but Kaoru finds now that it clings to him like a layer of static he can’t peel off, fuzzy and sticky and unchanging.

Kojiro, though. Kojiro has grown up; Kojiro has matured, gotten taller, started acting more thoughtful, burned the baby fat off his cheeks and the impulsiveness off his professional veneer, if not his personality. 

Kojiro is _older_ , and Kaoru still feels like the same melodramatic, bitter teenager. He reaches out a hand to clutch the freezing balcony railing and raises his mug to his lips with the other hand. His tongue burns, but he swallows the scalding liquid anyway. It brands a mark on his throat. 

His mouth tingles with heat—it's gone numb, and he should probably know better than to drink all the tea while it’s still piping hot, but it’s past two in the morning and burning his tongue is the least of his concerns.

He could leave now, thinks Kaoru, if he wanted to. Even though they’ve started sharing a bedroom, most of his things are still stored in the other room, and he could pack up without Kojiro noticing.

He could buy a train ticket and go anywhere in Okinawa. Or board a ferry to Kochi and start a new life. Kojiro might miss him for a month or two, but he’d get over it. 

And at least Kaoru wouldn’t dream about Kojiro leaving, if he left first. Before Kojiro had the chance.

Kaoru’s knuckles whiten against the railing. His muscles ache and his eyes prickle with a mixture of exhaustion and agony. 

A ticket, a train, a trade-off.

But then he closes his eyes and thinks about Kojiro. It’s like a switch has been flipped, wrapping Kaoru in golden lamplight and the warmth of Kojiro’s hugs and the smell of cooking Italian food.

He breathes in the salty beach wind, and he remembers so much, _so_ many memories from years of built-up yearning and friendship hammered deep enough in his bones to ward off the sour taste of solitude, but still too hollow to fill the echo chamber of worry that comes with it.

The way Kojiro’s hair used to flop into his face, dark green and messy and boyish; the sparkle in his eyes, how he’s always leaned closer to Kaoru when he felt shy or timid, like two magnets with opposite poles, like Kaoru’s presence was comfort enough. It still unnerves Kaoru slightly—the implicit trust Kojiro places in him, the faith Kojiro holds that Kaoru will take care of him no matter what. It’s fucking _scary_ , that’s what it is, but Kaoru does it anyway. If only because he can’t imagine anyone else fulfilling that role for Kojiro.

The trade-off: the confirmation of some innate insecurity Kaoru has, for all of Kojiro’s fixed trust. A ferry ride to Kochi for years of friendship and later, something else entirely, something Kaoru hesitates to put a name to, because giving it a name means giving it permanence.

Giving it a name means it’ll be harder for Kaoru to run away.

It isn’t that he’s planning to leave any second; it’s that he’s spent his entire life constructing plan B and then C and then every other letter in the fucking alphabet, it’s that he holds himself back for stupid reasons and it makes Kojiro look so torn, and Kaoru hates himself for it. 

It’s that sometimes the words come out the wrong way, clunky and half-hearted and tiring, like there are molasses at the back of his throat making his mouth seize up, that he lies awake at night feeling like he’s been steeped in darkness and fear, or dressed from head to toe in panic. That when Kojiro is late for dinner, Kaoru is always sort of thinking maybe he won’t return. 

That he wakes up at two in the morning and makes green tea because it’s what he’s done forever, and he doesn’t quite know how not to.

His tea is getting cold. He downs the rest in one go but makes no move to go back inside. Fog is spilling over the slatted balcony roof and the air smells like summer rain, and Kaoru wishes it didn’t remind him so much of high school.

It’s a scene he’s become acquainted with, sights and sounds branded into his eyes and ears. The dog downstairs barking, the lady who comes home late from her job. Keys jingling in the door, the occasional car racing down the street, seagulls cawing.

He takes his hand off the cold metal of the railing and slides the door back out to walk inside. The joints squeak. He closes it and he’s enveloped by the warmth of the apartment, inviting and reassuring. 

The sound of Kojiro snoring helps to allay some of the chill stinging Kaoru’s skin with goosebumps, and he sets his mug softly next to the sink to wash the next morning.

His slippers slide against the wooden floor and he turns the doorknob, revealing Kojiro splayed out in a spread-eagle position across the bed, his face mashed into a cushion.

Kaoru sighs and rubs his forehead, but he just shoves Kojiro’s elbow away from him and climbs under the covers. He’s practically falling off the bed with the amount of square footage Kojiro’s limbs take up.

“Hey,” Kojiro mumbles, his voice husky with sleep and warm against the back of Kaoru’s neck. “You okay?”

Kaoru stiffens. He tries to keep his voice level. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Kojiro hums. “Good.” He finally moves his legs closer to one side, giving Kaoru more room, and throws an arm over Kaoru’s chest. “Bed was cold.”

“Did I wake you up?” Kaoru asks. He leans back into the steadiness of Kojiro’s chest and pulls his knees up into a ball.

“Nope,” Kojiro says. “It was the damn dog.”

Kaoru makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “Of course it was.”

Kojiro chuckles along with him, the sound sending vibrations up the length of Kaoru’s spine. “I feel bad for the owner.”

“I feel bad for _us_ ,” Kaoru replies, rolling his eyes.

Kojiro is silent. He tugs the blankets up higher. “Kaoru,” he starts, his voice barely a whisper. “It’s not the dog, is it.”

Kaoru’s eyes sting. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I notice when you leave. Most of the time, at least,” Kojiro amends. “I know it’s none of my business, but you’re not—doing something dangerous, right?”

Kaoru shrugs. “Not really. Just drinking tea.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Kaoru breathes. His chest contracts in on him and his lungs expand to counteract the empty space. “Sometimes I think I should leave,” he admits, in place of a proper reply. “Sometimes I wonder if things would be…better. Without me here.”

He hears the sharp intake of breath behind him. “Okay,” Kojiro answers softly. “You know it’s not true, though.”

He drops his shoulders. “Most of the time. It’s just…hard to remember, I guess.”

Kojiro rubs a hand over his hip bone. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“It scares me, how much I would do for you,” Kaoru says, ignoring Kojiro’s assurances. He blinks back tears. “It kind of disgusts me. I don’t—I don’t know how much longer this can go on. Before you leave me, or something.”

He feels the brush of Kojiro’s eyelashes against his skin and the way Kojiro's arm wraps tighter around his shoulders. “I wouldn’t,” Kojiro whispers. “Ever. I…I’m always here, okay?” he says, squeezing Kaoru’s arm gently. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay,” Kaoru whispers back, and he feels like his heart is shattering and healing all at once, the new fissures smoothing over the old ones, broken and damaged but still beautiful.

He closes his eyes. Kojiro’s pulse is constant; watery and yet impossibly substantial against his back, and Kaoru curls his fingers into a fist. 

They breathe together; in, out. Their hearts thump in time. And Kaoru thinks maybe they’ll be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos, bookmarks, & comments are all greatly appreciated <3
> 
> [tumblr](https://dewbells.tumblr.com/)


End file.
